But for those addicted to electricity it appears coal might again be the future. We can now make it from plant matter overnight, rather than waiting for nature to take millions of years. And this new stuff is carbon-neutral.

Doesn’t this highlight how the market needs much better information before making it’s (let’s be honest) collective decisions? Another blow for the institutions which reckon capital markets are anything close to efficient?

And while that lesson should make us wiser, we’re not sure that this look-forward to tech trends in 2013 added much to our collective knowledge. It seemed to be saying that tomorrow’s like today. But different. In unexpected ways. That we’re now expecting.

There was something that fundamentally augmented our worldview today. And for anyone still concerned about the current state of the economy, this is essential reading to restore your Festive Optimism Quotient. Or Reasons to be Cheerful in plain English.

With more than a nod to Alvin Tofler, Hanson has noted that the economy goes through periods of exponential growth when there is a fundamental shift in technology. We’ve moved from hunting to agriculture, from agriculture to manufacture. The interesting thing is not that these shifts are happening more quickly – we knew that already.

What’s interesting is that we’re in the death-throes of the manufacturing economy and are about to enter the age of connected machine-based intelligence – or Strong-AI.

What’s even more interesting is that the size of the economy doubles-up every time.

And while the politicians and economists can’t feel the groundswell of that coming yet (they should read more Life on the Edge), we sure as hell can.

In fact, we’d go as far as saying that Hanson has utterly under-estimated the impact of moving from the narrow-AI of today to the strong-AI of tomorrow. What this shift could bring is a qualitative change to his exponential pattern of growth. The timeframe between the doubling-ups will not only shrink further but contract to such a tiny focus that they are blurred to the point of becoming indistinguishable.

With our own deep nod of debt in the direction of Richard Seymour, we would argue we’re already at a point where we are more limited by our imagination of how to use technology than we are by the technological possibilities themselves.

And as intelligent machines begin to extend our own capability to imagine the new, the rate we can create and assimilate novel technologies will maintain the rate of exponential advance.

The end-rate of the humanity’s ability to innovate and assimilate change is not yet knowable. But once we can’t cope it seems likely that the AI we spawn will continue up the exponential curve unabated.

What such a society would be like to live in, we can only speculate. It would be one where we can’t directly assimilate (perhaps even comprehend) the technological change around us. Perhaps we’d have to live separately, advancing at our own end-rate but falling rapidly out of relevance in terms of our ability to impact the AI-driven world.

But if this is scary, fret not. We’re a long way off that point. And back in the now, you can see the immediate implications.

Whatever the future, our current economic situation is not never-ending. Technology and its accompanying economics will see to that.

Is it us? Or did the rest of the world not react to the really, really big news of the day?

Scientists have managed to teleport a proper solid object – not just a lone photon or two. Sure, its only 1mm in size. And yes, the experiment hasn’t been replicated. But the paper’s in a peer-reviewed journal. So why’s no one else shouting about it?

But if teleportation does turn out to be fantasy, it won’t be alone. We now know there’s a planet 12 light-years away that’s similar to earth and twice as old. But suddenly – and in a complete reversal of the above – everyone’s talking about the Super-Advanced Beings that live there. Really? In the incredibly unlikely event they do exist we wonder whether they too contrive to read their greatest dreams into every piece of data they create?

Meanwhile the somewhat unfortunate Instagram situation continued. The photo-sharing giant insisted it’s not seizing ownership of users’ snaps. Despite the new Ts&Cs appearing to do just that. The riot will rage on, we’re sure.

Luckily UK users – some well acquainted with a good old riot – could be particularly aggressive towards Instagram. The British legal system has now enshrined a difference between criminal offences and merely offensive tweets.

Everyone we’re meeting is rather enjoying the Festive Season. But that conviviality and air of expectant relaxation was not reflected in the news today. No sir. Not at all.

First-up for the suspicious minds among us was the Twitter lie detector. Trustworthy updates are, apparently, longer, include links, have a more negative tone and feature swearing more prominently. So that was hardly happy news either. Those long aggressive tweets may be depressing. But they’re truthful.

Then anger was properly roused over Instagram. The new Ts&Cs mean it can sell your pics – in return for no cash. And you can’t opt out from this state of affairs. Your face might even appear in their advertising. We predict a riot. Others felt it was tantamount to Facebook’s newest acquisition committing suicide, all rather publicly. And Starbucks knows how quickly big corporates need to fall in to popular opinion these days. So perhaps more to come?

That said, we’re going to need some pretty strong medicine to make the nasty economic-monsters go away. And we doubt that building ‘Digital Layers’ in our homes for Minority-Report type control in every room is going to be enough. Not least because our money’s on voice-control. Do you want to waving your arms around the whole time? It’s just going to make you tired.

But if Osborne’s not listening, perhaps our new favourite economist can petition his own President. The campaign? Please, Mr President, will you make a New Year’s resolution not to start a war? And then you might not need to invest in the rather-icky injectable battle wound foam.